8am. Doing my makeup. Brain already fully unhinged.
The kids' sports apps. School apps. The app I downloaded, forgot the password to, and downloaded again.
Dinner. Groceries. The washing that has been in the machine since Tuesday.
The subscription budget I keep meaning to cut. Except I keep not cutting it.
The dog that pissed on the carpet. I thought she was trained out of that years ago.
The car service my husband keeps asking me to book. The thing I added to the insurance at 11pm and told myself was saving us money before going back to sleep. Whether it actually is.
Why am I not sleeping.
Is it hormones. Is it a virus. Is it the cortisol from the exercise I keep meaning to do more of. Is the exercise actually making me gain weight.
How much is too much Botox. Is this blended. Is this screaming Kmart or can I pass it off.
The coffee spend. Whether a proper takeaway budget would actually buy me time or just prove I have given up entirely.
The orthodontist who is an hour and a half away and charges like he invented teeth.
The school meeting about the kid being picked on, which I have to attend looking like I have my life together.
All of this before I have put on both eyebrows.
And then I open my laptop and run a business.
You are not bad at managing things. You are managing absolutely everything. On no sleep, in a five-minute window, while the dog watches you with a butter-wouldn't-melt face.
Here is what I want to say very clearly, to anyone who has nodded at any of that:
The answer to most of it is a week away with your girlfriends. Too much wine. A smutty novel. Enough chocolate to eat until you feel ill. A proper ugly laugh on a beach somewhere.
That one I cannot help you with. Not yet, anyway.
But there is one pile I can actually do something about.
Your business backend.
The CRM nobody is updating. The leads going cold because there is no follow-up system. The onboarding that only exists because you personally remember every step of it. The inbox that eats your Friday afternoons whole. The processes living rent-free in your head that would collapse the moment you took three days off.
That is the stuff that should not be on you anymore.
That is what The Handoff is for.
I build the system. I place the person. You get your business out of your head and into something that runs without you hovering over it.
Not all the piles. I am good, but I am not a miracle worker.
Just the business ones.